Abstract:

“Dragging kerosene tanks” was a ritual in the rice riots happened in Wenzhou between the late Qing Dynasty and the period of the Republic of China. Hoping to solve the food shortage, the protesters used this ritual to promote the strike and bring pressure to the government, gentry and food merchants. The rice riots were closely related to the decline of the system of selling rice in turn, the charge of “sea leaking” and food purchase pressure, and meanwhile were entangled with the struggles of different political powers in modern Wenzhou. The local government’s coping of the riots reflected the change of administration and that of the relationship between the official and the civil. In 1940s, the food policy adopted by the Kuomintang government was quite different from previous policies. With the strengthening of grain tax, rice riots happened more and more frequently and they became more and more organized and politicalized, so that “dragging kerosene tanks” was finally prohibited by the authorities.